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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Detail, EMP Museum, Seattle

September 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Distorted and colorful reflections on the metal surface of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington.

I made this photograph, and a series of them of this subject, during a visit to Seattle back in 2006. After seeing the exhibits at the EMP Museum, I spent some time wandering around the Frank Gehry designed building and looking for photographs.

Seattle seems like a great place to photograph architecture – you are almost guaranteed soft light! Here I had a mostly cloudy sky with a few spots of blue sky, so the basic light was very nice. In addition, the building itself is, in places, one giant fun house mirror. In this shot the reflective panels are picking up their own coloration, some clouds and blue sky, and some extremely distorted reflections of nearby carnival rides – and all of that stuff is set off against the sky blue curving shapes projecting from the building at the upper right. Some of the colors reflected in the wall panels are so colorful as to almost be over-saturated, and with the strange distortions they create the effect seems almost hallucinogenic! Is there any color that cannot be found somewhere on that wall?

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Commentary, Ideas, Thinking Aloud

Brief Thoughts on The Life of a Photograph

July 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

The image I posted earlier today both here at the blog and on Google+ got me thinking about the various ways that a photograph can “come to life.” This particular image followed a path that several other images that I consider to be among my best followed – namely, it languished in my raw file archive for nearly a year before I rediscovered it recently while going back through the old files. I recognized this pattern some time ago, and I now make it a habit to revisit all of my (thousands and thousands of) raw files about a year after I shoot them.

Why didn’t I “see” this image when I first reviewed raw files right after the shoot? I’m not entirely certain, but several ideas come to mind. Sometimes at the time of the shoot I have a strongly fixed notion of how I want to portray the subject , and as I shoot I’m already categorizing exposures by how well they correspond to this preconception. So when I initially go through the raws I may be mostly looking for what fits my expectations as opposed to looking objectively at what works on its own merits. Coming back a year later allows me to better see the image for what it is, without having my judgment so affected by prior expectations.

Related to this is the sheer number of images and how one deals with them in the post-processing workflow. I may begin with what I think are the most promising couple of images from a shoot and then take them all the way to a print-ready (or actually printed) stage. Once I’ve done that with the first selects from a given subject, I’m more likely to move on to other subjects – and potentially leave other good images in the dust.

There is a lot more to say about this, I think, but I’ll save the longer explication for another blog post in the future. Does anyone else make a practice of doing a full review of raw files at some future date?

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man Talking on Cell Phone

June 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Man sitting on a bench in front of a San Francisco building and talking on his cell phone.

The first time I worked on this photograph, I made a decision to work it up as a black and white image. However, when I returned to it a month or so ago, I felt like it might be interesting as a color photograph as well.

There is nothing all that special about the location itself – it is on a small street in an area that might be thought of as along the edges of downtown San Francisco. It is not too far to typical large downtown buildings, but here it seems that many might residences and rental units, and many on this street are connected with the Academy of Arts College (or is it “university” now?) facilities that are spread all around the city. I’m intrigued by the interesting shapes and colors and textures of these San Francisco buildings, that often embody some strange combination of a great deal of order (carefully painted rectangular white window frames), utility (the fire escape being almost the most prominent thing on the front of the building), and little oddities (the benches on a slanting sidewalk and guy talking obliviously on his cell phone).

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

People, MoMA

June 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People moving on multiple levels of lobby and walkways at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

I’ve been sitting on this photograph for a while, but I’ll interrupt the recent series of Sierra Nevada photographs to insert something more urban.

The photograph was made handheld inside a central atrium-like area of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, a space from which layers of walkways could be seen. Although the slow shutter speed was somewhat a matter of necessity (but not totally) it also allowed me to let the moving figures blur, which suggests their motion more than would a faster shutter speed. I also removes the specific features of many of the closer people and lets them function more as generic figures in the image. There is more going on in the scene than might be apparent with a cursory glance.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.